Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (46 page)

‘You may have all the time in the world to do so back at the apartment,’ he replied. Sticky tape screeched as he stretched it over brown paper. ‘We will convert one of the guest bedrooms into a studio.’ Sharp white teeth neatly sliced through the tape, long fingers smoothed it into place.

‘Marco—’

‘Is there anything you want to take with you now, or can the rest wait until we are more able to receive it?’ he cut in smoothly, then lifted the canvas down and finally looked at her.

Although the sunlight might be wearing the warmgold of the late afternoon, the way it touched her hair and her skin reminded him of her own self-portrait. But the expression in her eyes could have been her
mother’s. Sad. It was sad. She didn’t believe there was any hope for them.

‘You came back,
cara
,’ he reminded her soberly. ‘But you did so to a new order of things. That order cannot be returned to what it used to be because you are afraid of what the change may mean.’

‘It can if you let it,’ she argued.

But he shook his dark head. ‘
I
no longer want what we used to have,’ he explained, so succinctly that Antonia had no choice but to understand his meaning.

Her eyes grew so dark that his heart hit his ribcage. It was obvious she saw the choice he was giving her—between leaving him again or facing their future with all its complications—as equal to standing between a black hole and oblivion.

But she
had
come back, he grimly reminded himself. It was the only thing that stopped him from going over there and promising her anything so long as she agreed to stay with him.

It was a strange sensation, this fear of losing her, he noted as his eyes—and his bluff—held firm. ‘Ready?’ he prompted.

She lowered her eyes, turned away, ran her fingers up her arms to her shoulders as if she was trying to hug something to her. Courage? The chill of fear? The love he knew she felt for him? The need to believe that he felt the same about her?

It was time she began trusting in that word ‘love’, he thought grimly. Time she began to trust
him
.

‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she said quietly.

Relief almost floored him. He had to turn away to grimace at the way his legs had just turned to nothing.

‘Let’s go, then.’ Still holding the painting, he went to collect her bit of luggage. As she approached he silently handed over her shoulder bag, then just as silently turned to the door.

T
HE
apartment had a hushed air about it after the taxi ride across the noisy city.
A
large flat brown card package leant against one of the walls with the Romano Gallery name printed on it. Marco went to place his new find beside it, then walked away down the hall and into their bedroom with her suitcase.

He was making some statement about ownership, Antonia recognised that as she followed him. Strange, then, that stepping into the one room where she’d always believed she truly belonged she should suddenly feel as if she was entering alien territory. Yet nothing had changed, the room looked exactly as it should do—if you didn’t count the absence of her few personal possessions.

Marco was already putting the case away in the cupboard. There was a statement in the way he did that, also, because the case had not been unpacked and he was shutting the door, turning the key in the lock and even went so far as to remove the key and pocket it.

Try running off with only what you came here with, now, the action yelled at her.

Unsure how to respond, Antonia was still considering her options when he came back towards her, shut the bedroom door with one hand and removed her bag from her shoulder with the other then simply let it drop. And every action was so deliberate that he set her nerve-ends tingling. Her hand was caught next. He used it to trail her behind him over to the window where he
touched the switch that sent the vertical blinds sliding across the glass.

The room became shrouded in a soft half-light. Seduction suddenly eddied in the air. Turning her towards to him, he looked down at her, searched her whole face as if he had forgotten what it looked like, then sighed a small sigh.

‘Why the closed blinds?’ she asked him. He had never bothered to do that before.

‘Ambience,’ he replied. ‘A desire for your full attention,’ he added. ‘And the need to shut the rest of the world out while we remind each other what it was we almost lost.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Antonia said. ‘I—’

‘Don’t
ever
use those words to me again,’ he cut in harshly. ‘Especially
not
in English.’ He even shuddered. ‘They will always represent to me the coldest little goodbye a man could experience.’

He was talking about her text message. Her heart found her throat and blocked it as she gazed into his pain darkened blue-grey eyes.
I’m sorry
hovered on her lips again. She converted the words into a tender-sweet kiss meant to convey the meaning for her.

Pain-dark changed to passion-dark. ‘
Si
,’ he whispered in approval. The kiss was most definitely preferable to words for him.

So one tender kiss led to another, until tender became hungry and hunger converted itself into desire. Desire stripped clothes away in a slow precious reacquainting with what she had put at risk today.

This was it. All she needed, she told herself. This man looking at her like this, touching her like this—
needing
her like this. Anything else he cared to bestow was merely a bonus. Because she could feel the love
emanating from him even though he had never said the words to her.

But, as she had just demonstrated, words weren’t necessary when there were other ways to relay your feelings. It was special. What they had was special. So they made love as if this was their first time. And as one day slipped harmoniously into another, Antonia began likening it to a honeymoon, where neither was seemingly prepared to allow anything to spoil what they had together.

Who wanted a betrothal ring? Who wanted a marriage proposal? This was so much more comfortable. So much more her perception of what real love was about.

On Monday, Marco slipped back into his work routine without so much as hinting that he couldn’t trust her to be there when he came home again. And Antonia began converting one of the guest bedrooms into her studio. Tuesday was the day she remembered the two paintings that had disappeared from the hallway and made a note to ask Marco where they had gone, only to forget completely when he arrived home that evening with a letter from Anton Gabrielli. It was an acknowledgement that she was indeed his daughter, apologising for his behaviour, and offering to announce her as such if she wished him to do so.

‘Did you bully him into this?’ she asked Marco.

‘I merely made him see the error in his judgement of you,’ he replied. ‘I thought you deserved that. What you do about him now is, of course, your own decision.’

‘So you aren’t going to persuade me into making his relationship to me public?’

It was a challenge, and Marco recognised it as such. ‘I don’t need him,
cara
,’ he stated it quietly. ‘But I
wondered if you might feel the need to know him better one day.’

‘I won’t,’ she said adamantly. ‘It turns me cold just to look at his name.’

‘Then put the letter away,’ Marco advised, ‘and forget about him. He won’t trouble you again, I promise you.’

Which made her wonder what influence he had brought to bear on a man like Anton Gabrielli that he could sound so sure about that. But she didn’t ask, didn’t want to spoil her new grasp on happiness by contaminating it with questions she really didn’t want the answers to.

Wednesday, they went out to dinner with Franco and Nicola, who were just back from their visit to Lake Como. Nicola looked radiant. Her eyes shone with pleasure because it was so very obvious that Antonia and Marco had sorted out their differences. Everyone enjoyed themselves. It was just as it used to be.

Thursday and Friday she devoted to overseeing the transfer of her artist’s studio to its new location, and not once… Well, maybe once or twice she found herself thinking wistfully back to a certain ring box she had last seen disappearing into Marco’s pocket never to see again. But then she would pull herself together and get on with whatever it was she was doing. She was content. She was happy. Marco was making her a permanent part of his life and he loved her; she was sure of it. Or becoming more sure of it as the days went by.

Then he ruined it.

It came so unexpectedly that it just hadn’t occurred to her how she had been living the last week, cocooned in her own sweet dream-world constructed around a comfortable self-denial, until, over breakfast on
Saturday, he murmured casually, ‘We are going out tonight. A party. I think we will go shopping for something really special for you to wear…’

A party, she repeated. A party meant people. People meant facing her public humiliation from the week before. She couldn’t do it. ‘No,’ she breathed.

Lifting his eyes from his ever-present morning newspaper, he narrowed them on her paling face. ‘Red,’ he murmured softly. ‘I think we will go for something truly outrageous in red. Long. Slinky. Strapless and backless to show off your wonderful skin.’

‘I’m not going, Marco,’ she announced more firmly.

‘Wear your hair up,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Let everyone see your beautiful neck and know that the only man allowed to put his lips to it is me…’

‘I said, I’m not going!’ She jerked to her feet.

‘And I will drip you in diamonds.’ He refused to take any notice of her. ‘Ears, throat, wrists—even a sexy anklet sounds really irresistible.’

‘Why don’t you just hang a sign round my neck saying
Scarlet Woman
?’ she flashed at him angrily.

Sitting back in his chair, he grinned at the image. ‘Red-painted mouth. Lots of black mascara. And I think a red carnation in your hair might just make the whole ensemble perfect.’

He even kissed the tips of his fingers. Antonia had never felt so hurt in all her life. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking like this to me, when you
know
what happened the last time you took me into company!’

She was pulsing with hurt, with fright, with indignation, Marco observed ruefully. But he didn’t question any of those emotions. In fact he absolutely understood her right to feel them.

But as for the rest? ‘Are you ashamed of who you are,
cara
?’ he queried curiously.

Her chin went up. ‘No,’ she denied.

‘Ashamed of being my woman, then?’

‘I won’t be pilloried a second time.’

Which was a neat way of getting out of giving him the answer to his question. He stood up. She made to spin away. He held her in place with the firm grip of his hands on her waist. Trapped by the table, their chairs, and his hands, she had no choice but to remain exactly where she was. But the tension in her body was enormous, the need to run again so palpable he could actually feel it dancing along every muscle she possessed.

‘We made a deal a week ago,’ he reminded her.

‘Deal?’ Her eyes flickered restlessly to his, then away again. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Liar, he thought grimly. ‘You returned to me wanting the same as what you almost left behind.’ He spelled it out to her anyway. ‘I told you you couldn’t have that.’

‘But we’ve been so happy this week!’ she cried. ‘Why do you want to mess with something that’s working fine!’

‘This week I’ve played it your way. I’ve allowed us to hide and pretend everything is
fine
because you seemed to need to do that. But I don’t want
fine
I want
perfect
,’ he added. ‘And perfect comes at a price,
cara
. The point is, are you prepared to pay it?’

She clearly didn’t like the sound of the word. It was like holding a tiger by its tail. ‘And what is this price?’

‘Your trust,’ he announced. ‘I want you to
trust
me to make this work for us. And, just so you understand how serious I am, I must warn you that I will accept nothing less than your total trust.’

Nothing
less—as in
nothing
. No Marco at all was what he was saying here. Antonia shivered at the mere prospect. ‘And this trust comes in the colour red.’ Her sigh turned itself into a grimace.

‘In your face, knock them dead red,’ he confirmed. ‘Will you do it?’

Trust him not to hold her up as an object of scorn? No, she didn’t. For you didn’t dress your woman up, as he had just described, without having some ulterior motive for doing it. But to demand to know what that motive was had now been denied her by that word
trust
.

So, ‘Yes,’ she said.

His soft laugh said he was aware of how difficult she’d found it to say that word. But, ‘Good,’ was all he replied. ‘Because I’ve seen the perfect dress on Via Monte Napoleon. Let’s go and buy it…’

It was certainly red, Antonia confirmed, as she stood looking at herself in the bedroom mirror. In your face
and
knock them dead. A quiver of anxiety went shivering through her. In fact, Marco had described it perfectly. Long and slinky, with a heart-shaped boned bodice that defied gravity and a back that wasn’t there at all. Pinched-in waistline, a long skirt that clung smoothly to every detail of her shape as it made its way down to her ankles, and a kick-back pleat that began at the back of her knees to give her the ability to walk—and her figure an hourglass shape that was so damn sexy it couldn’t be more ‘in your face’.

Her hair was up, as requested, and she truly did drip with diamonds. Diamond choker, diamond bracelet at her wrist, diamonds dangling from her ears. Glancing down at her high-heeled strappy red shoes, she caught a glimpse of the diamond anklet he had insisted she
wear. In fact the only thing she had been able to refuse, and get away with it, was the red carnation to dress up her hair.

Her lipstick was red, her eyeliner so much more pronounced than she would usually wear it that, as she looked into her own eyes, she didn’t recognise them. She looked lush, she looked sexy, and she looked like a wealthy man’s possession.

Which she was, she acknowledged.

And if this wasn’t dressing up to brazen out whatever was coming, then she didn’t know what was.

‘If I come near, will you attack me?’ a deep voice quizzed her.

Her eyes flashed to him via the mirror. Big and lean, too darn handsome for his own good in conventional black dinner suit and bow-tie, he was looking at her as if he wanted to eat her alive as she stood there.

‘I wonder how many propositions I will get tonight?’ she mused by way of getting a hit back at him without the suggested physical attack.

Stepping behind her, he slid his hands around her narrow waist, his thumb-pads gently stroking against her bare skin. She quivered in response, despite not wanting to. The sensation centred itself deep in her abdomen and refused to budge.

Sex, it was called. Give it to me. He saw it reflected in her eyes. ‘They can try,
mi amante
, but we both know to whom it is that you belong, hmm?’

Yes, she thought, and for a moment actually hated him for being so sure of himself. It could not go unchallenged, though. So she turned in his grasp and stroked a hand up his dress shirt, found his warm throat, trailed her fingers up to his ear. This man might know her inside out, but she knew him also. The pleasure
point behind his ear only needed the lightest of caress to send a shudder through him.

‘And you know to whom it is that
you
belong, hey,
mi amore
?’

He caught the trailing fingers, kissed them with a wryly mocking bow, his eyes dark with promises as he straightened again. It was only then that she saw the colour of his jacket lining. It was glossy silk, matadorred.

He was most definitely out to make a very big statement tonight, she realised. ‘Where are we going?’ She frowned up at him.

‘So you thought to ask at last,’ he smiled. ‘Well, wait and see. It’s a surprise.’

Opening her red-painted mouth to tell him that she didn’t like surprises, she felt the dark eyes challenge her. She held her breath, thought about that wretched word
trust
, and closed her mouth again.

He rewarded her with a kiss that required his mouth to be wiped clear of lipstick later and her to do a quick refurbishing job on her own.

After that they left the apartment and went downstairs to climb into the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine, which meant that Marco intended to enjoy a drink tonight. It wasn’t late, which was unusual here in Milan, where most parties tended to begin way after ten. But she didn’t begin to understand why they had set out so early until they arrived at Linate airport, to a waiting helicopter.